


Shade Of the Sun

by SwiftSnowmane



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Bethyl-centric, Daryl alone in the desert, F/M, Final Thoughts, Final moments, Gen, author regrets everything, there's no one left to kill but himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 19:24:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5427779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwiftSnowmane/pseuds/SwiftSnowmane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even the last man standing cannot stand forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shade Of the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> My long-held headcanon for Daryl Dixon's last stand.
> 
> (Fueled in part by my Mark Lanegan obsession, and [this song](https://youtu.be/dcSLTlsLVY0) in particular.)

_I will fall down to my knees_  
_And I’ll be closer then to heaven_  
\- Mark Lanegan

 

~

White. It is everywhere. Coating the strands of his long, lank hair, finding its way into every crease of his sun-weathered skin, right into the corners of his tired, squinting eyes. Gritting between his bared teeth, dusting his faded leather and denim so that, from a distance, he gleams. A beacon in a coat of blinding white, a lure for those that still believe they hunt him.

The desert is a harsh and desolate place. Beneath unquiet, shifting sands, the faded earth is cracked-open, gaping. Lying in wait, eager to swallow even the vilest remnants of mankind.

It is as good a place as any to kill them all. As good a place as any to die.

At first, he’d ridden all the way out beyond the blue hills, to the empty, wide open plains. Beyond the faded grasslands, beyond even the high plateaus, all the way to the desolate sands. Until his tires were nothing but shredded black ribbons, tearing up on burning asphalt. Until he’d scavenged the last drop of fuel.

Then, he’d walked. He'd walked all the way along a wide, dried-up riverbed where water had once flowed, fresh and plentiful in the days of paradise, long before the first turning of the world. He’d followed its bare and sun-scorched banks until his clothes were rags and his boots were worn through to the soles of his feet upon the burning sands. Until even his leathers were in tatters, so that the wings upon his back flapped and fluttered in earnest. Until he had knelt upon its edge and sipped the last, muddy drop.

And then, finally, he had walked no more, had rested his weary earthly form against the base of a lone, gnarled tree, more ancient even, perhaps, than the river that had ceased running long ago. And there, with carrion birds calling high overhead, he’d waited. Waited for them to find him. The last that still held breath. And find him they had. Those soulless ones who had once called themselves men, but who had always been far more monstrous, somehow, than the walking dead.

He’d waited beneath the shade of that tree and let them come. Some had followed him out there, all the way from the ruins of the city. Hungry, pursuant, hounding his heels. Up close, their eyes had been desperate, haunted, as though they too knew their violent end was nigh, and welcomed it.

There beneath those bare branches, those wretched remnants of long-lost humanity seek him out even now. Like some desert priest, offering a quick death in place of absolution. Cleansing the world of its sins, one by one, their blood pooling, burning trails into the scorched earth, their bones piling around him.

And once he has bathed in their red-hot blood, he waits for the last of the true undead to come for him. He no longer has to hunt them; their numbers have dwindled. He knows they will come, slow and staggering under the beating sun. Melting, or fading away. Like he knows he will, if he does not finish this soon.

But he does not mind waiting a little bit longer. He has waited long enough already. Waited patiently for his end.

(Hell, he’d even light up, to pass the endless time, but he smoked the last one long ago.)

He sits down beneath the tree, dislodging his weapon from his aching shoulder, and lets out the fainest of sighs. Long-weathered by wind and sculpted by time, its base is cool and smooth against his back, against his old scars. He sits, his crossbow at his side, and waits.

As the day fades, as the sun sinks down into the west, in place of the dark, circling wings bright stars appear, wheeling overhead. The world, turning a final time.

The wind howls around him, cruel and sharp, cutting through both the fine layer of sand and the beaten leather, freezing and burning him at the same time, from the tips of his ears to the marrow of his bones. Bracing himself against the scarred and barren tree, surrounded by now-empty vessels, the broken bodies of those he has so skillfully escorted from this world, he waits, and does not sleep.

Sleep is for those who still dare to dream. Dreams, for those who might yet wake to count themselves among the living.

(He never sleeps without hearing her song. He never dreams without laying beside her, in the lawn.)

For nights beyond count he has fended off sleep, outrun his dreams. But out there in those vast and nameless wastes, beneath the velvet, star-strewn sky, oblivion lies heavily upon him. The temptation of her voice, singing him into a forever-slumber. The faces of all those now lost, hovering on the edge of his vision. That red desert haze, beckoning him toward a blissful, easy end.

But his weapons are well-honed; he is not so easily vanquished.

He holds fast. To the cross of his bow, to the very edge of the world. Oblivion bears down and his lids flutter, threatening to close. His head lolls forward and he shakes himself back into waking.

He'll sleep when he finds her.

(He'll sleep when he's dead.)

 

~

Night falls, and he warms himself on neither light nor fire, nor heat of any kind.

Only memory.

For it reaches out for him, stronger by far than the grasping fingers of the dead.

_You’re gonna be the last man standing._

This is what he remembers, out there, alone on the sands. Long after the last walls of the last city have fallen, long after the others have gone, slain in hopeless battle or by their own hands. Long after he's dug the last grave. When he can no longer recall even his earliest waking nightmare: the cold, sharp metal, wielded by a red and angry fist, the claw of the first demon upon his back. When he can no longer feel the once-looming presence, the shadow of his long-dead brother. When it is only he and his sharp knives and heavy bow against the encroaching night, he remembers .

The warmth of her small body against his own. His chin, resting against the top of her head. _I hate good-byes_ , she’d said. The sorrow upon her face, as too many good-byes had been forced upon her, in the end.

Her eyes blazing in defiant challenge. _I can take care of myself_. The curve of her smile as she’d handed him back his big knife, dripping with black blood.

The cool, smooth contours of a glass jar in his hand. Her body, once more pressed against his, this time from behind, holding him up in that moment. Holding him up forever after. Holding him up, for all time. 

The sweetness of her slender form, curled against him in the darkness. Her sighs, feather-soft upon his skin as they lay down together upon the damp grass, beneath these self-same stars, on a long-ago summer’s night.

The faint, warm spot where her fingers had grasped his bow. Her hand in his, delicate bones twining between his own. Her voice, her song, piercing and true, nestled forever in his heart and mind. Her expression as she had watched his face, the softness of her realization. _Oh_.

Perhaps he ought to remember other things. Darker things. But he remembers her. Her light, pure and gleaming. And the weight of her, on his back and in his arms.

She'd been heavier than she looked.

 

~

Dawn arrives, bright and cold, the last one he will ever see. The last sunrise for the last man. He rises with the light, to stand beneath the sun, a pale ghost casting but one, long shadow upon the world.

The early rays transmute the endless sands around him to purest gold, for a time. Gold as the wisps of her hair that had once tickled his chin. But soon the bright orb reaches its height, and turns to garish white, nearly blinding him once more.

On the side of the riverbank, he scans the horizon, eyes seeking, searching the far ridge of the world. He squints and rubs his grit-caked eyelids, knowing he will soon spy the dead in their numbers, arriving any moment.

But there beneath that bare and leafless tree, all he sees, all he remembers are the dark pines, and the wild oaks where she’d lived. Where she’d laughed. Where she’d loved.

Where, for a time, she’d been the last woman standing by his side.

_First and last_ , beats his heart.

He bows his head, solemn, avowing. Old habit moves his hand to rest over that darkest, most secret chamber. The only place he'd ever kept her safe.

Even as he lifts his gaze, even as it falls expectant upon that distant curve, all he can see is her smile as she'd lit a small fire for their breakfast. Even now, when he can no longer remember the taste of the game he had hunted, he remembers her eyes sparkling, her beauty outshining even the bright morning dew.

The memory is enough to make a grown man weep, but he is long beyond tears now. He’s parched, the dry desert heat, the scorching, bone-bleaching sun. There has been no water for…what, two sundowns now? Three? His final meal longer ago still, a small, stunted creature—perhaps it, too, the last of its fellows in this dead land. He’d consumed its paltry flesh not for the taste or the sustenance, but for the memory. The last supper for the last man.

_I need a drink_ , she’d once said, more command than statement of fact. It’s been a long time since he had a drink. It’s been a long time since the night of the moonshine. He thinks sometimes it would've been better then, if he had gone blind.

It’s been a long time since there’s been anything worth seeing. It’s been a long time since _her_.

No, there is no water. Only blood. And even that is running thin.

His time is nigh, he can feel it. The hunter that he has been his whole life knows well enough when he has finally become the prey. His own, perhaps. He knows that his doom is close at hand. There is no avoiding it. The end of the line. Long awaited, and more than welcome.

As if summoned from the desert haze, they appear. He watches their approach, a slow-moving line that spans the horizon, their shadows barely visible now in the noon sun. The final herd, come for him at long last.

He is ready. His bow is drawn; his knife, sharp enough for the task at hand.

 

~

After what feels like another lifetime, or maybe only a few breaths, they arrive at the bank's edge. He takes them out easily, one by one, whirling, spinning, stabbing, slicing, dancing with the dead until their thick, black blood mingles with the red of those he’d finished the previous day and seeps down into the white sand at his feet.

Until there is only one left.

And oh, he is ready now. He even grins, teeth flashing wolfish and white in the harsh sunlight as he feels the rotten jaws, the sharp tearing away of flesh, as the jagged nails claw at his chest and neck. Holding it close, in a mockery of an embrace, he stabs the thing through its skull, reveling in this, his own end.

For now there is nothing thing left to kill. Nothing, and no one, for a long time now, left to save.

The last of the undead falls by his hand, falls to his knife, falls without a sound. And then he is standing there, panting amidst the slain. Standing tall, for a few moments more, beneath the sun. Standing tall, upon the blood-stained sand.

A wind, fierce and slicing, sweeps across the empty, open plain, the herald of an approaching dust storm. Against its blasting power he leans for a moment, arms outspread, suspended, before finally bowing before its might.

He braces himself with one hand, only just keeping himself from sinking fully to the ground with a low groan. As he holds himself up, his bloodied fingers dip into the grains of white, grasping the granules as though clinging to the very surface of the earth.

And then, finally, he lets go.

He releases his hold, relinquishes his claim. He opens his fist and watches as the remnants of mountains, crushed by forces greater even than death, spill from his palm and blow away in the wind. A handful of dust. It slips through his fingers, like time, like everything else.

_Don’t you think it’s beautiful?_

He would laugh darkly if he could, a harsh, barking sound, like his long-dead brother on one of his bad highs. Insanity bubbling, spilling over. _So fucking beautiful_ , he agrees. To perish in a sea of red upon the burning sands. To make the world safe at last. Safe from men.

_There’s still good people, Daryl,_ her voice echoes. Hopeful, reassuring.

_There’s only me now, girl_ , he tells her. _There’s only nobody…nothing._

This is what he remembers as the storm approaches, as it sweeps across the earth, singing its siren song. This is what he sees, when he cannot even summon the hardened eyes and feral visage of the man he had called brother _after._ The man he had followed for so long. When he can no longer glimpse the family he’d tried so long to protect, not even when he squints into the last of the fading sunlight. When he can barely remember their faces, or his own name. When only the nameless bodies of the dead remain to haunt the hollow, shadowed places of the world. When he is knee-deep in blood, dripping with gore, his thought turns to the one he’d long ago stained.

This is what he remembers as he finally falls down to his knees. When he sinks into a sea of blood, when the tips of his wings are stained dark red for the first and final time, a blessed crimson oblivion rising, coming for him at long last. This is what he remembers when the grit and the sand and the wind whirl around him, when all goes dim, when the last man standing stands no more.

Maybe now that his task is finished, now that his day is done, there will be an end to the endless pain, the endless thirst, the endless hunger. The endless missing. Maybe not a light, no. For everything is going dark. But he feels it, everywhere: the heat, the scorching. The burning.

Maybe he’s fallen now for good. From the soaring heights, all the way down to earth, and far below. Down to the inferno where he belongs—for all the times he’s failed. Failed them. Failed _her_.

But then he remembers: the flickering flames. The reflection, in her eyes. The smoke rising, the ashes falling. The searing heat at their backs as they ran. _We should burn it down_.

If he still had the breath to laugh, he would now.

For wherever there is fire, there, too, will she be. There he will find her.

For only she had ever possessed the power—the sheer and utter  _will_ —to turn a living Hell into Heaven itself.

Life flees from him now, bleeding from his mangled chest, and from other gaping wounds. From the places where, for once, he’s allowed his own flesh to be torn and shredded. Muscle and sinew, ripped from his bones. He wonders, fleetingly, what he tastes like. Death, perhaps. Pain. Sorrow.

All the loss in the world.

His heart slows its beating and his lungs fail to draw breath; his last reserve of strength is spent in leaning forward, in positioning the crossbow so that the sharpness of the broadhead rests against his sweat-stained, blood-drenched brow. And there, he will send the last bolt flying. The last bolt for the last man. Cupid’s own dart, piercing and, this time, so very final.

Red. It is everywhere. Dripping down the strands of his long, lank hair, running into the corners of his tired, squinting eyes. Stinging, burning. Flowing across his broad shoulders. Rivulets of crimson, cleansing the white from his broken wings.

Soon, the swirling dust will blot out the last of the light. Soon, the man who was Daryl Dixon will disappear into his own life’s blood, into darkness. Soon, a thousand black wings will descend to feast upon his body, and upon the rotting corpses of the dead that lie strewn around him.

Soon, the last man will descend to earth a final time. A falling star, burned out long ago, long before he will ever hit the ground.

As that man touches the trigger of his trusted weapon with all the tenderness and aching familiarity of a lover’s caress, the corners of his mouth turn up in the ghost of what might have once been called a smile.

He will burn for all eternity, if he must.

He will burn gladly, if it means he will feel her fire one, last time.

 

~

**Author's Note:**

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> **IMPORTANT NOTE: Please respect my wishes not to discuss the show beyond the s5 msf. Thank you!** :)


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